Guides: HSOC 0361 : Medical Missionaries and Partners: Reference Works

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: health and illness in the world's cultures
Offers lengthy articles on medical anthropology topics worldwide, including comparative cultural perspectives on specific diseases and health conditions, and theoretical approaches to cross-cultural health research. Also presents lengthy "cultural portraits" of specific cultures, focusing on their medical beliefs: cultures are selected from the Encyclopedia of World Cultures.
International Encyclopedia of Public Health. 2nd ed.
An authoritative and comprehensive guide to the major issues, challenges, methods, and approaches of global public health. This encyclopedia covers all dimensions of the field, from details of specific diseases to the organization of social insurance agencies.
World Christian Database
Attempts to provide statistics on Christian denomination membership worldwide, 1970-present. Identifying missions active in a country is not easy, but it is possible.

Biographical Information

Use these biographical directories, registers, and dictionaries to identify physicians, surgeons, and nurses who served as missionaries. With personal names and biographical information, you can search contemporary magazines and newspapers for mentions.

Biographical dictionary of Christian missions
Print only : Van Pelt Library BV3700 .B56
Informative entries with bibliographies, with a special emphasis on native-born missionaries. Appendices list subjects by time period, gender, martyrdom, region of service, agencies and orders, and type of missionary work.
Register of missionaries : (clerical, lay, and female), and native clergy, from 1804 to 1894 / Church Missionary Society
Contains three lists : Clerical and lay missionaries (starting on page 1), Female missionaries (p. 260), Native clergy (p. 297).
One of several Church Missionary Society registers available online, together covering 1804 through 1928. Many CMS missionaries contributed reports to CMS periodicals.
HINT! Handwritten updates to the printed biographical entries are usually handwritten on the preceding or following (blank) page. If people named in a biographical entry are listed elsewhere in the Register, their Register serial number will be given.
Also see:
• Registers of missionaries, 1804-1928.
• Register of female missionaries, 1905-1918 (manuscript).
• Other CMS and C of E Zenana missionary directories
HathiTrust : Directories/Registers of Missionaries
A messy HathiTrust search result that includes several directories of missionaries.

American National Biography
A source of biographical information on Americans of significance, both American and significance broadly defined. The one fast rule for inclusion is that the person must have died before 1996.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
A collection of current biographies on influential men and women in British history and culture, written by specialized authors.
African Biographical Dictionary. 2nd ed
Dictionary of African Christian Biography
World Biographical Information System Online
An index to biographical dictionaries, with worldwide coverage. Biographical search feature includes occupation searching.
Biography and Genealogy Master Index
An index to reference works with biographical information on multiple persons, focusing on late 19th- and early 20th-century Americans.
International mission bibliography, 1960-2000
Print only : Van Pelt Library BV2061 .I58 2003
Ancestry Library
The library version of Ancestry.com
Use Ancestry Library to locate (not-yet, retired, or on leave) missionaries through their decennial census records or birth, death, and shipping-list records.